Looking to upgrade, need some advice.

section8ff

Student

Posts: 66

Loc: Houston

3+ Months Ago

I recently aquired a server, and while it is in good shape, it is old and outdated. It is currently running a 350 Mhz processor and 128K ram. I am looking to gut the tower, and rebuild the entire server, reusing the case, the floppy drive, and possibly the tape drive.

Here is what I have pieced together thus far, please let me know what yall think of this setup, before I buy.

Those are the core components I have chosen thus far, and will add a CD-RW or DVD-RW, as well as a new hard drive (since the 9.1 gig drive currently in there would not last long with me).

This is going to be my first computer build project, though I feel confident that I will be able to complete this with relative ease. If you have noticed anything I left off the list, please let me know and list any recommendations, as well as if you have any advice.

Thank you in advance,

Section8

Don2007

Web Master

Posts: 4923

Loc: NY

3+ Months Ago

I'm not a hardware guru so the few times that I rebuilt anything like that, I checked with the supply house to see what components made a good match. There are bundled kits available for that purpose.

section8ff

Student

Posts: 66

Loc: Houston

3+ Months Ago

I am not a hardware guru either, I intend to verify all compatibility before purchase. I do know that the board and processor are compatible, I am trying to figure out of it's a good match or not.

Thank you for the reply Don,

Section8

Merlyn

Guru

Posts: 1143

Loc: Oregon

3+ Months Ago

What you provided looks fine to me.

Depending on how many hard drives you put in it, you may want to consider upgrading your power supply.

500 Watt PSU will more than likely (also depending on if you use a video card or onboard video) only support a few peripherals.

I would say 3 hard drives max, maybe 2 along with the dvd-rw.

But again, it all depends on what you want to do with the server.

section8ff

Student

Posts: 66

Loc: Houston

3+ Months Ago

Merlyn wrote:

What you provided looks fine to me.

Depending on how many hard drives you put in it, you may want to consider upgrading your power supply.

500 Watt PSU will more than likely (also depending on if you use a video card or onboard video) only support a few peripherals.

I would say 3 hard drives max, maybe 2 along with the dvd-rw.

But again, it all depends on what you want to do with the server.

It's going to be running a small (3 computers max) home network, on the ubuntu linux LAMP server platform. I will use it mainly for learning web development/IT skills, as well as a general file/print share network, we dont have any plans to go crazy in the gaming department. I will look into a higher powered power supply, as well as a second hard drive. Would I need any special setup for the dual drives, or could I run them as a master/slave setup?

Thank you for your help,

Section8

righteous_trespasser

Scuffle

Posts: 6229

Loc: South-Africa

3+ Months Ago

For that the 500W would work brilliantly ... I have a 500W and I am running a GeForce 8800 Fatal1ty and 2 HDD's ...

And to be honest it sounds like that Motherboard is overkill ... "SLI-Deluxe" tells me that it's SLI ready which would in return make it more expensive and as i sounds, you aren't even going to add a Graphics card ... rather get a motherboard that supports DDR2-800 RAM and get that and upgrade the RAM to DDR2-800 instead of the 667 which costs basically the same price or even a bit less ...

and also make sure that the bus speed of the motherboard you are buying is eual or greater that 1000Mhz for this processor ...

My supplier's site is down at the moment, but when it's up again, I will give you a list of motherboards that could also work ... hopefully that happens soon ...

section8ff

Student

Posts: 66

Loc: Houston

3+ Months Ago

I will likely be running a graphics card, just havent decided which one yet. I am looking at one that will run dual screens, but is not terribly expensive. I know that I will be looking at a pretty good chunk of change for one like that, but I dont need a 300 dollar graphics card either. I do appreciate the help and advice, it will help a lot. I priced some DDR2 ram, as one of the other computers I am looking at upgrading, the board I picked out utilizes that, and for a 512 stick, it was like 92 bucks. The pci ram for this one was 30 for a gig, does that sound right, or was I looking at the wrong ram?

righteous_trespasser

Scuffle

Posts: 6229

Loc: South-Africa

3+ Months Ago

You can look at a motherboard like the Asus M2N-MX SE which supports DDR2-800 RAM and has a PCI express 8x slot ... If you are looking for heavy games on it later I wouldn't use this because it only has PCI Express 8x and not 16x ... but then this motherboard is very cheap (R500 which is about $71) ...

and about the RAM, it costs me abot R150 ($21) for a 1GB DDR2-800 module ... please note that this price is at the supplier and not at a retail store ...

About the Graphics Card, maybe something like the Geforce 8500GT is a good choice and it's fairly cheap, about R650 ($92) ...

section8ff

Student

Posts: 66

Loc: Houston

3+ Months Ago

thank you for the the info, that should help a lot. The graphics card sounds about where I am looking to be price wise, though I am still flexible in price. I will continue to research boards, and look into other boards. I want to make sure that this server will be good for years to come.

thank you again

righteous_trespasser

Scuffle

Posts: 6229

Loc: South-Africa

3+ Months Ago

yes, I just saw that the graphics card I showed you is a PCI express 16x and the board only supports 8x ... I do not know if cards are backwards compatible ...

I built myself a server type PC the other day and I have the following things inside ... (just for reference)

I bought this all for about R7000 ($1000) ... IMO that is a great PC ...

section8ff

Student

Posts: 66

Loc: Houston

3+ Months Ago

I'm not a big intel person, used it in the past, and prefer amd. Thats just my preference, wont say that your system is bad, it looks like a good system. I do appreciate your help, it does help a lot

Merlyn

Guru

Posts: 1143

Loc: Oregon

3+ Months Ago

Yeah, from the specs you said your 500W power supply should be fine. Unless you end up SLI-ing (sp?) two video cards for no apparent reason.

section8ff

Student

Posts: 66

Loc: Houston

3+ Months Ago

At this point, I dont see any need for using the SLI setup, but I cant say that later on I wont need it. I know that some of the parts I picked are a bit on the over kill side, but I want to make sure I wont be doing this in a year or so. I am wanting to make sure this server will perform how I want it to for several years to come.

I really do appreciate all the help and advice, and I really do take every message and use the information in it to help in my decision. I may not keep the motherboard, if I can find one that will work as good as the one picked.

Thank you again to everyone

righteous_trespasser

Scuffle

Posts: 6229

Loc: South-Africa

3+ Months Ago

section8ff wrote:

I am wanting to make sure this server will perform how I want it to for several years to come.

In that case I would really go for a quad core ... AMD has got quad core processors aswell you know ...

section8ff

Student

Posts: 66

Loc: Houston

3+ Months Ago

I'll look into the quad core setup. Thank you RT

SpooF

٩๏̯͡๏۶

Posts: 3422

Loc: Richland, WA

3+ Months Ago

What do you plan to run on this thing?

I saw Quad-core and 8800 and instantly thought Cryis, not home server lol

I just built a small home server box for $390. Your welcome to spend all you want but realize your going to come to a point where its all going to be dead weight, aka you'll never need all the processing power.

section8ff

Student

Posts: 66

Loc: Houston

3+ Months Ago

SpooF wrote:

:shock: What do you plan to run on this thing?

I saw Quad-core and 8800 and instantly thought Cryis, not home server lol

I just built a small home server box for $390. Your welcome to spend all you want but realize your going to come to a point where its all going to be dead weight, aka you'll never need all the processing power.

You bring up a valid point, and I know I likely dont need a 3 GHz processor at this point, and there is the possibility of going down to a smaller processor. I think if I go with the quad core, I will go with a 2.x GHz processor.